Sunday, October 26, 2025 2:00 PM
Friday, October 31, 2025 7:30 PM
Sunday, November 2, 2025 2:00 PM
At the National Hispanic Cultural Center Albuquerque Journal Theatre
Music / Nicolás Lell Benavides
Libretto / Marella Martin Koch
1968. The Delano grape strike is dragging into its third year. Farmworkers in California are building solidarity that transcends race and language. Bobby Kennedy is running for president. Tricky Dick is on the radio promising discipline. Dolores Huerta is holding the movement together with one hand. With the other, she dials home, again, to say goodnight to children she hasn’t seen in weeks.
She’s not a symbol. Not yet.
She’s just doing the work.
Dolores is an opera that floats between the real and the imagined, memory and nightmare. Composer Nicolás Lell Benavides and librettist Marella Martin Koch stitch history into something fragile and feverish. There are sacred chants, electric guitar pulsations, bossa nova hallucinations.
Labor icon Dolores Huerta helped build a union out of dust and righteous anger. She walked the fields, held the line, made the calls. With César Chávez and Larry Itliong, she shaped a movement that reached the ears of presidents but never lost sight of the people bent over the vines. The work didn’t stop. It never does. That’s the cost of believing another world is possible.
¡SÍ SE PUEDE!
Commissioned and Co-produced by Opera Southwest, West Edge Opera and San Diego Opera, presented in partnership with the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
CAST
Dolores Huerta / Kelly Guerra
César Chavez/ Sergio Martinez Andres Salazar
Bobby Kennedy/ Alex Boyer
Ethel Kennedy /Ingela Onstad
Helen Chavez /Cecilia Violetta López
Juan Romero /
Larry Itliong /Rolfe Dauz
Tricky Dick / Brian Cheney
CREATIVE TEAM
Conductor / Anthony Barrese
Director / Octavio Cardenas
Scenic Design / Liliana Duque Pineiro
Costume Design / Kaylee Silcocks
Wigs & Makeup Design / Jacqueline Chavez
Lighting Design / Daniel Chapman
Chorus Master / Aaron Howe
Piano tuning and preparation are provided by Albuquerque Piano Services: http://www.albuquerque-piano-tuning.com
Running Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes including one intermission
SUNG IN ENGLISH
-English translations are projected above the stage for all operas-
45 Minutes before curtain, Opera Southwest offers our “Opera Insights” pre-opera talks. These take place in either Bank of America auditorium or Wells Fargo auditorium, accessible from the shared lobby with the Journal Theatre
